Various types of telecommunications networks exist and are made of a large number of components which are referred to herein as “managed entities”. The telecommunications network to be managed may be e.g. a SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) network, a PDH (Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy) network, or a combination of such networks. The basic situation in network management is usually such that an operator managing a telecommunication networks, e.g. a telephone company, has a plurality of customers (i.e. network users) in addition to the physical network. The operator sells the customers various services that utilize the network. (A public network will be used herein as an example; in principle, however, the same description applies to a private operator managing e.g. an organization network). To meet customers' data transmission requirements in the physical network, the operator utilizes a number of facilities or operative processes for the provision of customer services. These operative processes can be divided into groups in accordance with the functions for which they are intended:
Service Provisioning—the function of service provisioning is to create and maintain user requirements in terms of physical hardware and management, including e.g. invoicing customers for services.
Operation & Maintenance—the function of operation & maintenance is to keep the network operative to allow the usage of customer services. One of the most important functions in this respect is the supervision and repair of network faults.
Planning & Development—the function of planning & development is to develop network operation so as to better meet customers' needs and to increase the overall profitability of the operator enterprise.
With respect to the operation and maintenance, because telecommunication services are realized using a multitude of managed entities such as ports, circuits (SNC), cross connection, protection groups, links and the like, management becomes difficult. In particular, traditionally each of these managed entities is managed independently in a network management software system even though they are part of an overall service.
In the prior network management software systems the end-user correlates the underlying circuits, cross-connects and other managed entities into a single manageable service. However, this creates a lot of problems including a user having to look at multiple management applications. Further, interpreting the managed entities and relationships between the managed entities is cumbersome.
Thus, there is a need of a computer system adapted to function as a network management software system which can be managed by the user and one that represents the overall service, rather than a collection of independent managed entities.